Share
×
Inspirational Quotes
Authors
Professions
Topics
Tags
Quote
A truth that is merely handed on, without being thought anew from its very foundations, has lost its vital power.
Hans Urs von Balthasar
Share
Change background
T
T
T
Change font
Original
TAGS & TOPICS
Hans Urs von Balthasar
Age: 82 †
Born: 1905
Born: August 12
Died: 1988
Died: June 26
Cardinal
Catholic Priest
Theologian
Translator
Writer
Lucerne
Switzerland
Balthasar
Hans-Urs von Balthasar
Foundation
Lost
Thought
Truth
Anew
Power
Foundations
Without
Handed
Vital
Merely
More quotes by Hans Urs von Balthasar
St. Paul would say to the philosophers that God created man so that he would seek the Divine, try to attain the Divine. That is why all pre-Christian philosophy is theological at its summit.
Hans Urs von Balthasar
No one should think he can quickly dispose of questions posed here offhandedly. It was precisely because writers were in the habit during the time of the Reformation of theologizing with a hammer that the split in the Church became irreparable. And to work at overcoming this split means much effort. Only the patient need apply.
Hans Urs von Balthasar
The saints are never the kind of killjoy spinster aunts who go in for faultfinding and lack all sense of humor.
Hans Urs von Balthasar
Only the Christian religion, which in its essence is communicated by the eternal child of God, keeps alive in its believers the lifelong awareness of their being children, and therefore of having to ask and give thanks for things.
Hans Urs von Balthasar
It is to the Cross that the Christian is challenged to follow his Master: no path of redemption can make a detour around it.
Hans Urs von Balthasar
Her (Mary's) Son first had to be the Child of the Father in order then to become man and be capable of taking up on his shoulders the burden of a guilty world.
Hans Urs von Balthasar
Love alone is credible.
Hans Urs von Balthasar
The Christian response is contained in these two fundamental dogmas: that of the Trinity and that of the Incarnation. In the trinitarian dogma God is one, good, true, and beautiful because he is essentially Love, and Love supposes the one, the other, and their unity.
Hans Urs von Balthasar
We are not only interested in those aspects of the mystery of the Roman Catholic Church which set her apart from the other Christian communities, but also to show how often they are central beliefs by describing what is specifically Catholic in such a way that the partner in dialogue can see, even from his own standpoint, the inner consistency.
Hans Urs von Balthasar
Consequently, Christian meditation is entirely trinitarian and at the same time entirely human. In order to find God, no one need reject being human personally or socially, but in order to find God all must see the world and themselves in the Holy Spirit as they are in God's sight.
Hans Urs von Balthasar
There is much in Christianity which can be subjected to exact analysis. But the ultimate things are shrouded in the silent mysteries of God.
Hans Urs von Balthasar
Thus it is necessary to commence from an inescapable duality: the finite is not the infinite.
Hans Urs von Balthasar
Lovers are the ones who know most about God the theologian must listen to them.
Hans Urs von Balthasar
The One, the Good, the True, and the Beautiful, these are what we call the transcendental attributes of Being, because they surpass all the limits of essences and are coextensive with Being.
Hans Urs von Balthasar
It is, finally, a word is untimely in three different senses, and bearing it as one's treasure will not win one anyone's favours one rather risks finding oneself outside everyone's camp... Beauty is the word that shall be our first.
Hans Urs von Balthasar
If God wishes to reveal the love that he harbors for the world, this love has to be something that the world can recognize, in spite of, or in fact in, its being wholly other.
Hans Urs von Balthasar
Above all we must not wish to cling to our suffering. Suffering surely deepens us and enhances our person, but we must not desire to become a deeper self than God wills. To suffer no longer can be a beautiful, perhaps the ultimate sacrifice.
Hans Urs von Balthasar
Christian obedience, by its very nature, has a heroic character.
Hans Urs von Balthasar
Our situation today shows that beauty demands for itself at least as much courage and decision as do truth and goodness, and she will not allow herself to be separated and banned from her two sisters without taking them along with herself in an act of mysterious vengeance.
Hans Urs von Balthasar
To be a child means to owe one's existence to another, and even in our adult life we never quite reach the point where we no longer have to give thanks for being the person we are.
Hans Urs von Balthasar